I love this game, and I do not authorize any of you to disagree. That said, I'm still not sure why I haven't authorized Samus to use gravity or varia suit, but whatever.

Music is really boring. I'm very surprised this is my one and only complaint so far, maybe an hour and a half in. Of course, I didn't go into this expecting to blame Sakamoto for ruining my life, either, so perhaps my expectations were not quite as low as some.

The D-pad works better than the analog ever did. Makes moving during camera angle changes much, much easier, and is just all around great.

There is lots more to praise, but I'll go play instead.

lol Adam, wb. :3

Ohh, yes, I almost forgot the only real complaint (I can live with boring music, god created Pandora for a reason): the forced-first-person sequences. It's like playing Where's Waldo? except you aren't told in advance who Waldo is, and more boring.

I just beat some giant purple thing, looked vaguely like Ridley I guess, toward what I can only assume is the end of Sector 1, and spent literally half an hour not knowing what the heck the game wanted me to scan in order to progress the game. I still don't know what it is. I had to turn off the game and lose all my progress. Awesome.

And unfortunately for me, I absolutely love every other inch of the game, so it looks like I have to do this.

Can anyone help a guy out? There's a man on the ground, some of the soldiers are standing in front of me, behind me is some kind of vehicle and a building I just came out of. I'd be indebted to you forever, except not really.

There's some green goop off to the left side of the truck that you have to zero-in on, Adam

_{and now you are forever indebted to me, though not really}

Thanks. You're the man.

Hopefully it doesn't take long before some sort of scan guide is made, because I get the feeling I'm going to be needing one to finish the game. Judging by reviews, I'm not the only one who has a problem with it, either. I'm surprised this element made it through testing.

...though I must say I look forward to blasting that purple bird guy thing again.

Well, its just that we don't have the scan visors from prime's games. With it, it would have been a little too easy for it, I think!

...or they could have just not put it in? I mean, it's not like it's fun or anything. It's just pointing the remote randomly around the screen. Every instance so far would have worked much better if it just went straight to the cut scene and showed Samus spotting it on her own.

So I'm in Sector 3 and well am I supposed to have the Varia Suit yet?

There's really only two stumpers for those, the other instances are much easier to figure out.

Stuck on Ridley. Without spoiling anything, the whole fight and the cutscene leading up to it are pulse-poundingly epic. This game just keeps on getting better and better! The story has gotten far more compelling, and the quality of the voice acting took a big leap as well. This game is well on its way to becoming one of my top 3 Metroid games.

So far this game is great. I just got to the beginning of sector 3, and can't wait to find out what the deal is with that white fluffy critter. The cutscenes are good, and the voice acting and dialogue aren't as bad as some reviewers made it out to be. Switching between 3rd and 1st is seamless, and I don't understand the complaints about not being able to move in 1st, why would you need to? It is a different kind of Metroid, but I like it.

How would you guys rate it so far? And how would you rank it compared to the Other M(etroids) of the series?

Glad to have you back, Adam. You wanted Uforia, right?

Well, my complaints and praise have been pretty well documented, but here's how I would score it (on the Nintendo Life scale)
Metroid Other M: 9/10
The Good: Outstanding control scheme that's both fun and strategic, good balance of action and exploration, compelling story, well produced cutscenes, Samus' voice is spot on, epic battles and boss fights, seamless transition between cutscenes and game, great soundtrack
The Bad: Script is mediocre at best, art direction is not the series' strongest, some poorly textured environments

As for how I would rank it...
Super Metroid
Metroid Prime 3
Metroid Prime
Metroid Other M
Metroid Fusion
Metroid
Metroid Hunters

Not according to my Wii, which tells me I played this game for eighteen hours and forty minutes yesterday (and I still haven't finished it). I'm sure that pretty much every review is just based on the story's length (point A to point B), and they didn't actually bother to try looking for the more deviously hidden pick-ups...

Yup, that was one of my complaints as well, but, thankfully, only the first two of those are difficult/vague. A word of advice: if you have 'B' pressed down as you're looking around you can pass right by what you're supposed to find without the cursor going red, so just pick a spot to center the visor on and look around while your vision is locked to avoid wasting minutes of valuable playtime.

I thought you were going to send me that game, but after awhile of no blue light, I looked at my PMs and I think you'd said you'd wait until the calendar shipped. Anyway, I got Ufouria. If you want to get me something now, I can PM you with a suggestion, but I'll have to think about it first. Well, if you have 800 points to spare, DKC2 would be nice. I forget how much you said you were willing to spend.

As for ranking the games, I'd say this is better than Prime 2 and 3 easily. Ignoring Hunters awesome multiplayer, better than that, too. Unless you are really good at video games, better than Metroid 1 & 2, too. I'd say it is on par with Prime 1, but it's hard to say. I think this style of game play and storytelling is much more befitting the Metroid series than Prime's style, but Prime 1 nailed what it set out to do, while Other M's praise always comes with lots of little exceptions. As an idea, Other M beats Prime, but perhaps not in execution. This comes from someone who has only played four hours, though.

Awesome, good to know. Every one of them has taken me a long time so far, but only that one stumped me completely.

@Adam: Ridley's not really a spoiler, though, since the very first Other M E3 trailer showed a piece of the Ridley fight (where he's scraping Samus against the wall)...

Most reviewers were probably going by the timer on their save file. I'm not sure how it counts time, but mine is definitely lower
than my actual time.

I think pime and Other M should switch

Not that I don't trust you or anything, Adam, but I guess I'd prefer to wait since I'm out of points now and I'm gonna get a card for Christmas. Sorry.

Also I don't really like Prime so I hope it's better than that. I don't expect it to be better than Zero Mission, which is one of my favorite games ever, or even Super, which is really good too, but the story and action appeal to me more than any other Metroid game's so far.

Ditto